McDonald’s Will Elevate Wages at Firm-Owned Eating places

Competing with fast-food chains, restaurants, and other workers-owned businesses, McDonald’s said Thursday that it will also raise wages in some restaurants to attract employees.

The company announced it would increase its hourly wages for current employees by an average of 10 percent and raise the entry-level wage for new employees to $ 11-17 an hour, depending on the restaurant’s location.

The salary increases will not affect 95 percent of the nearly 14,000 independently owned restaurants in the United States, only the 650 company-owned restaurants.

Reacting to a tight job market, McDonald’s repeated a move by the Chipotle burrito chain earlier this week. He hoped the higher wages would attract up to 10,000 new employees over the next three months as the busy summer season approaches and restrictions are lifted in many of his restaurants.

At its in-house restaurants, McDonald’s said the average employee wage would rise to $ 13 an hour, with some restaurants seeing an average wage of $ 15 an hour later this year. All of the company’s restaurants are slated to have an average salary of $ 15 by 2024, according to the company.

However, this is not the minimum wage of $ 15 an hour required by the Fight for $ 15 organization supported by the Service Employees International Union. The organization Fight for $ 15 leads a strike by McDonald’s employees in several cities across the country on Wednesday before the company’s annual general meeting.

A Fight for $ 15 leader rejected McDonald’s move to raise wages, saying it wasn’t enough.

“We showed up to work every day in the midst of a global pandemic and risked our lives without adequate PPE or paid time off to keep our businesses open and company profits flowing,” said Doneshia Babbitt, McDonald’s employee in St. Louis and union leaders said in a statement. “You have called us essential for over a year, but your announcement today shows that you have considered us available all along.”

The strikes in 15 cities on Wednesday would continue as planned.

In 2019, McDonald’s announced it would no longer use its powerful lobbying arm to combat attempts to raise the federal, state and local minimum wage to $ 15 an hour. Speaking to Wall Street analysts in January, McDonald’s chief executive Chris Kempczinski said the company was “okay” in the more than two dozen states where minimum wages have been gradually increased.

Although many of its dining rooms were closed due to much of the pandemic or had limited capacity in parts of the country, the strength of McDonald’s passageways helped push profits to over $ 4.7 billion in 2020. It paid its shareholders more than $ 3.7 billion in dividends and an additional $ 874 million to buy back shares before the program was suspended in early March last year.

Mr. Kempczinski agreed to cut his base salary in half last year, but his total compensation was still more than $ 10.8 million.